Is it safe to delete photos from your phone after using them in Notion?
short answer: yes, usually, but there's more to it….
How Notion Actually Stores Your Images
When you upload a photo to Notion, it doesn't just link back to your phone. It makes a copy and hosts it on Notion's servers. That means once the upload is done, the image lives in the cloud, completely separate from your device.
There are a few places you can drop images in Notion:
- Icons: the little emoji or image on a page
- Covers: the banner across the top of a page
- Inline images: images dropped directly into the body of your content
All three work the same way under the hood. Upload happens, Notion stores it, done.
So Can You Delete It From Your Phone?
Yes. Once it's uploaded and you can see it sitting in your Notion page, that copy on your phone is redundant. Deleting it from your camera roll won't touch what's in Notion.
The One Thing That Can Go Wrong
The only scenario where you'd lose the image is if you delete it from within Notion itself, either by removing the image block, trashing the page, or clearing the icon/cover. That's the action that actually removes it from Notion's servers.
Deleting from your phone? Totally fine. Deleting from Notion? Gone for good (well, recoverable from Trash for a limited time, but still).
File Size Limits
Notion does have upload limits depending on your plan:
- Free plan: up to 5MB per file
- Paid plans; up to 5GB per file
Note that it's a per-file limit, not a total storage cap. On the free plan, you can upload as many small files as you want, there's no "you've used up your storage" wall. You just can't upload a single file bigger than 5MB.
The Bottom Line
Upload your photo → confirm it shows up in Notion → delete it from your phone without a second thought. Your Notion copy is safe and self-contained. Just don't delete it from Notion unless you actually mean to.